MORE PHOTOS: Honolulu Marathon, Dec. 13

Breaking into a sweat even before crossing the starting line Sunday, Moiliili resident Burt Senas decided to hold back on the throttle at the start of the Honolulu Marathon.

“This year it was a little bit hot,” said Senas after finishing his 10th Honolulu Marathon in as many years. “It was humid. There was no wind.”

Despite the unfavorable weather, Senas finished the 26.2-mile run in 3 hours and 41 minutes, coming in under the four-hour target he was chasing while training seven days a week for the past three months.

His wife, Alyssa, said she was happy he achieved his goal, especially since she didn’t have to wait long for him at the finish line.

Like her, thousands of supporters and volunteers showed up to the 43rd annual Honolulu Marathon on Sunday to help the 22,029 runners who had crossed the starting line make it to the finish.

“They’re awesome,” Senas said of the volunteers on the course. “Everybody made sure everybody had water. Nobody had to wait.”

About 10,000 volunteers participated in the event, working in the medical tent, handing out water, giving massages, cleaning up, guiding runners along the course, and setting up and breaking down.

While many of the volunteers were from high schools and the military, a smaller group of folks has been volunteering for years and in some cases decades because of one official: Ronald Chun, who is in charge of planning, engineering and race operations.

Chun’s 900 or so volunteers build the finish area at Kapiolani Park, set up signs along the course, clean up after the event and store the marathon’s equipment at a pier at Honolulu Harbor until the next marathon.

Over the years, Chun and his wife, Jeannette, who is secretary/treasurer of the marathon’s board, have built up a loyal volunteer crew.

The Chuns’ involvement began in 1978 when Jeannette Chun began marathon training for her health and ran her first Honolulu Marathon with her husband. During that run, which had only about 3,000 participants, the couple saw the organization needed help and got involved.

ONE OF THEIR volunteers, Verna Takushi, who runs the food market at Kapiolani Park, has been volunteering for 23 years, first because her son needed community service hours for his high school and now because of Chun.

“Every year we threaten to retire, but when Ron calls, you come back,” she said. “Ron is so efficient at what he does. When we come here we learn a lot from him.”

Takushi, a school cafeteria helper, said Chun compiled booklets for volunteers listing the equipment to be delivered, broken down to the hour, and even a booklet for police about where to post for the event.

She said Chun has an encyclopedic memory of the volunteers’ responsibilities, which keeps the operation running smoothly.

“You don’t want the runners to have a bad experience,” she said.

Another longtime marathon worker, Jimmy Keola, 48, began volunteering when he was 7 or 8 because he was a friend of one of the Chuns’ children.

Keola hasn’t missed working a single marathon since. Now he receives a small stipend for setting up the marathon’s communication system, which requires him to take a week off his job as a city recreation director.

“They put their heart and soul into the marathon,” he said. “I look forward to doing it because it’s something that we can give Hawaii.”

Chun, 77, a retired electrical engineer, said he wouldn’t do the job if it weren’t for his volunteers, whom he isn’t afraid to push hard.

“If you’re going to help me, you give blood,” he said, adding that he tries to treat his volunteers fairly and be sure they are fed.

ON DIAMOND HEAD Road another group of volunteers formed a human chain to separate the lead runners and wheelchair participants from runners heading in the opposite direction.

Precious Fale, 17, of Waipahu said she felt encouraged by the runners she was trying to cheer on up the hill, one of the most daunting in the course.

“It was good to see everybody smiling and running,” Fale said. “They were telling me, ‘Good job.’”

Fale was one of 108 students from the Hawaii National Guard Youth Challenge Academy, an alternative high school for at-risk youth in Kapolei, who arrived at about 3 a.m. to line the road from Kapiolani Park to the Diamond Head lighthouse.

Ammon Pouha, 17, another Youth Challenge student, said his role was coaxing runners back onto the correct side of the road if they tried to run around slower runners.

“Some of them didn’t want to listen, but some of them did,” he said. “I didn’t want them to get hit.”

He said he found inspiration from the participants, including one woman he saw pushing a girl in a wheelchair while running.

“It motivates me to want to do more of it,” he said. “Community service really lightens up people’s day.”